“Health is the Ability to Manage Yourself Without Helpâ€: How Older African American Men Define Health and Successful Aging

Derek M Griffith, Emily K Cornish, Erin M Bergner, Marino A Bruce and Bettina M Beech

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2018, vol. 73, issue 2, 240-247

Abstract: ObjectiveFew studies have explored how older African American men understand the relationship between health and successful aging. The goal of this study was to examine how older African American men’s conceptions and definitions of health and notions of successful aging are interrelated.MethodUsing data from 22 semistructured individual interviews with African American men ages 55–76, we examine how cultural and normative ideals about health map onto the core components of Rowe and Kahn’s (1997) definition of successful aging. We also explore how these notions influence factors that have implications for health.ResultsConsistent with prior research, we found that older African American men operationalized notions of health in ways that mapped onto three elements of successful aging: (a) the absence of disease and disability, (b) the ability to maintain physical and cognitive functioning, and (c) meaningful social engagement in life. A fourth theme, what men actually do, emerged to highlight how regular health practices were key components of how men define health.ConclusionsThese findings highlight key elements of how older African American men conceptualize health in ways that are interrelated with yet expand notions of successful aging in ways that are critical for health promotion research and interventions.

Keywords: Gender; Men’s health; Men’s health disparities; Population health; Qualitative methods; Successful aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbx075 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:73:y:2018:i:2:p:240-247.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().